


Interpreter

by killabeez



Category: Highlander, Highlander: The Series
Genre: Episode: s05e09 The Messenger, Ficlet, M/M, POV First Person, Season/Series 05, Sexual Fantasy, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-09-01
Updated: 2003-09-01
Packaged: 2017-10-17 14:47:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killabeez/pseuds/killabeez
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Fifteen Minute Challenges. (FMC#10: Just a hint of that smell is enough, and I...)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interpreter

Sometimes I think about what he’d say if he knew what goes through my head when he’s around. If he knew what I’m really thinking about when we’re hanging out at Joe’s shooting the breeze, or listening to Dawson’s guitar with a couple of beers between us. If he had any idea what I’d really like to do to him when we’re alone, pretending to be a couple of normal guys finally getting comfortable as friends. As if things could ever be that simple between us.

Sometimes I think he does know—that he knows all too well, and it’s all part of an elaborate game we started that first day, in Paris. That one day he’ll admit he’s known all along, and that the time for games is over.

I look for hints in his words, his body language, in the rare occasions when I catch him looking at me, or when he touches me, the barest hint of his palm against my back or the tips of his fingers touching mine when he hands me a drink, or something he’s cooked for us. But I can never be sure. He touches all his friends like that; his body language could tempt a doorknob, but he’s that way with everybody, all the time, and most days I don’t think he even realizes it. Most guys, you could say the cooking thing was a dead giveaway, but this is MacLeod we’re talking about. I keep thinking sooner or later he’ll ask me to spar with him again, or paint somebody’s porch, and then—but he doesn’t, hasn’t. On bad days, I think it’s because he reads me all too well, and he doesn’t want to send out the wrong signals.

You’d think that with my experience, I’d be able to figure him out. If he were anybody else, if there were less at stake, I’d say screw it and take the chance. He’s four hundred years old—looking like he does, I’m sure he’s dealt with advances from friends, enemies, total strangers, and probably half the furniture on the planet at one time or another. He was friends with Brian Cullen for almost two hundred years, and I can’t believe Cullen never tried to get him to walk on the wild side. Obviously, their friendship survived just fine. Whatever else you might say about MacLeod, he’s no prude, and he doesn’t judge his friends on their lifestyle choices, as long as they’re not hurting anyone.

I just wish I knew for sure whether there’s even a chance. God knows I’ve looked. His chronicles are maddeningly vague, and even reading between the lines I’ve found no definitive answers one way or another. There’s Cullen, of course, but if the two of them ever got horizontal, they did it out of sight of their Watchers, or else the buggers didn’t think it was important enough to note, preoccupied as they tended to be with Cullen’s impressive exploits in other areas. There’s page after page of ‘dueled with thus-and-so, beheaded you-know-who,’ and precious little of the vital information like ‘had at each other like minks in the coach today,’ that a man really needs.

Then there’s Cochrane. Easy enough on the eyes, and I know what it’s like being on campaign, all that testosterone and battle lust and bonhomie all over the place. I’d be lying if I said that image hasn’t kept me warm at night a few times. Galati’s a possibility—a big one, in my mind—and there’s a dozen other contenders, at least, both mortal and immortal, not to mention the half-dozen years he spent on a ranch in Colorado with Connor MacLeod. But as much room for speculation as his chronicles provide, it’s all just that—speculation—and a part of me can’t help thinking, maybe there’s a reason for that. Maybe he really is the exception that proves all those theories about the spectrum of human sexuality. Maybe that’s what stops me from risking what we’ve worked so hard for.

Then again, when it comes down to it, maybe it’s not his friendship I’m afraid of losing. Maybe I don’t want to give up the fantasy.

As long as I let things lie, let them stay as they are, I can have him a hundred different ways in the privacy of my own thoughts, imagine him spread out beneath me or kneeling with my cock in his mouth or my tongue inside him and he never has to know about it.

His chronicles didn’t lie. Anyone who read them could have guessed he was a man of considerable charisma, alpha-male to the core, passionate and physically attractive, a talented fighter, a sensualist, a lover of women. His idealism and his pride and his blindness to the truth of the world are all there to read, and I’d read them many times before I ever met him. I’d heard Rebecca and Paul and Fitz talk about him; I’d seen the hero-worship in Dawson’s eyes when MacLeod’s name came up in conversation, even when he thought he was being so circumspect about how well they knew each other. I thought I knew what I was getting into, that day in Paris when I waited for him in my flat, amusing myself with the thought of the surprise I’d give him.

Problem was, none of that told the whole story. None of that prepared me for the vulnerability he wore under all that power and charisma and pride. Not even photographs could capture the physical reality of him, bigger than life, the straightforward, pure sin of his mouth and that deep voice, the weariness and stubbornness and intelligence written all over him. Nowhere in all his chronicles had anyone written of the certainty I felt that, alpha or not, this was a man who would offer his whole self to the man or woman who could master him; no one had spoken of the way every line of his body betrayed his hunger for approval, his need to be taken outside of himself and allowed to set down the burdens he carried, and had carried for so long. No one had mentioned the straight, strong lines of his neck and shoulders, and how they could obsess a man with the desire to see that pride surrendered willingly.

So desperate was I to have him trust me that I did something utterly foolhardy, ridiculous—I offered him my head. Of course I knew he would never kill a man who offered himself up that way, most especially not someone he’d sworn to protect, but let me tell you, it was hard to remember that when I found myself standing under that bridge with his sword at my neck, feeling like a fool.

Thank the gods I was right about him, because if I’d been wrong, it would have served me right. Five thousand years, only to throw it all away on a moment’s infatuation -- that would have been fitting. As it was, I’d made a huge mistake in thinking I could trick him into trusting me. I’m still living with that one, still waiting for the other shoe to drop, when he finally lets himself ask me about it. One of these days I will remember that these things always come back to bite me on the ass.

I was right, and we both walked away from that bridge, but as it turned out I was wrong about my infatuation being a temporary thing. I disappeared, but couldn’t stay away; I kept coming back like a guy in need of a fix, and every time I saw him, I’d end up jerking off every night for a week, trying to get him out of my system. Seeing him with Amanda wasn’t much help. It had been a long time since Amanda and I had crossed paths, and she didn’t look to be too big on the idea of sharing this time around, but that didn’t stop my libido from suggesting plenty of possible scenarios. When she finally skipped town, and Duncan left Paris, it was a relief. I told myself it had been a harmless little obsession, put him out of my mind, and got on with my life.

As plans go, it wasn’t a bad one. Would’ve worked, too, I think, if it wasn’t for that day on the porch, with the paint. If it wasn’t for the fact that I still think about that afternoon, still wonder what would have happened if I’d done what I wanted to and touched him then, taken him into the house and undressed him in the living room full of plastic sheeting and scaffolding and tools and had him right there, the sun coming through the open windows. Just the smell of fresh paint is enough to make me get hard from remembering how close I came to doing just that.

I still think about it, when he’s being a stubborn pain in the ass, when we’re in the car on our way to Joe’s, when we’re playing chess. When we go running, and we’re both sweaty and alive, our hearts pounding, and I think about what it would be like to have him in the dojo in broad daylight, his legs spread and his shorts down around his ankles and me inside of him, holding his hair out of the way and biting that stubborn, stiff neck of his. When I’m in the shower afterwards, jerking off for the fifth time in a week, imagining him on his knees, his hands bound behind him, that incredible mouth sucking me, his eyes closed, his eyelashes dark on his cheeks. I imagined that once and it made me come, just the thought of it.

I think about having him on his hands and knees on his bed, about licking him until he’s shivering and then taking him like that, making him moan softly, making it last a long time.

That one’s new, since I came back from Tibet. Last night, at Joe’s, I caught myself staring at his neck and chest where his open shirt left them bare, his mouth more than once, his tongue when he licked a drop of scotch from the rim of his glass. I think it’s getting worse this time, not better, and it doesn’t help that I’m starting to think I’m not imagining it when I catch him looking at my body, my hands. I’m starting to think I wasn’t wrong at all, that first day in Paris.

I’m starting to think it’s time for a different game between us.


End file.
